Sunday, September 12, 2010

Into perfect spheres such holes are pierced

The post title is from one of my favorite poetry collections. It's a book about grief because the poet's two nieces died in a plane crash.

We would never say her grief is double-- because she wasn't the one who lost her daughters, (only two girls she counted as daughters)-- but, she is both grieving and witnessing. I know, there's no point in measuring or comparing-- when someone you love dies nothing is ever the same.

---

Tonight I read an essay written by a friend. We don't actually know each other very well. But I read her work, and sometimes I cry afterwards. She writes about the husband she loves. They met in Argentina. She was there to learn Spanish and climbing some mountain with friends. He was the guide. He saved her from hypothermia. He knew the Latin names for all the plants. He taught her all the constellations in the southern hemisphere. Can you imagine? So, of course they fell in love. They got married, and lived happily ever after.

Except, one night he died of altitude sickness on a mountain far away. They'd only been married a couple of years.

But when I read her work, I'm slammed with the risk we all take in loving someone that way. They can go away permanently. And you have to live years, and every day, every minute without them. Seconds.

----

The God I believe in is very romantic because he wants us all to love that way. The high risk kind. The kind where there is communion because you're willing to put in the work it takes to not be afraid (which is just another form of pride anyway).

---

I believe in heaven. I believe in a Savior who died so that we'd never lose anyone we loved for very long-- that promise is joyous...

But, there must be something Godly in learning how to sorrow, or no child of a supreme deity would ever be asked to lose someone so dear and so precious for even a minute.

Subscribe To

Georgia O'Keefe

"The summer I spent in Taos I sometimes rode out to the eastern hills late in the afternoon with the sun at my back. No one else seemed to go there. When the sun went down and was not shining in my eyes I would ride back to the Pueblo. The plain was covered with the grey sage that in a few places crept up a bit against the base of the mountains, looking like waves lapping against the shore. It was a widewide quiet area. But out in those hills I picked up mussel shells in groups all turned to stone—probably millions of years old. They sometimes even had a little bit of the original blue color. I carried them back and left them somewhere in the unknown. I haven’t seen any more shells like them and haven’t seen a sea of sage like that either."

Love is the ultimate outlaw

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as its accomplice. instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words make and stay become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free." —Tim Robbins

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day. ~The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis